Chapter Six: Did Jesus Really Rise?

Let Us Reason Together

1 Corinthians 15:1-20

The Claim That Proves the Claims

Chapter Five examined what Jesus claimed. He forgave sins, took the divine name, claimed oneness with the Father, received worship, and claimed the throne at the Father's right hand. But claims alone prove nothing. Any man can say anything. The question is whether the claims were confirmed.

In Mark 2, Jesus answered that question on a small scale. He did the visible thing, healing the paralyzed man, to prove the invisible thing, His authority to forgive sins. The resurrection is the same pattern on the largest scale possible. Jesus did not leave His followers to guess which sign would settle the matter. He named it in advance. "An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:39-40). He said it again in the temple: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19). John adds, "But He was speaking of the temple of His body. So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this" (John 2:21-22).

Paul draws the conclusion. Jesus "was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4). Therefore the resurrection settles the question Chapter Five left open. If Jesus stayed dead, He was a liar or a lunatic, and the discussion is over. If He rose, He is Lord.

What Paul Delivered

Paul wrote to the church at Corinth because some of its members had begun to say "that there is no resurrection of the dead" (1 Corinthians 15:12). He answered them by reminding them of what he had preached to them from the start:

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also." (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

Notice first the phrase "of first importance." The resurrection is not one doctrine among many, to be accepted or set aside according to taste. It is the core of the gospel.

Notice next that every part of this summary is a historical statement. He died. He was buried. He was raised. He appeared. These are not feelings or private convictions. They are claims about what happened at a particular time, in a particular place, to a particular man.

Notice also that Paul names the witnesses. Cephas, which is Peter. The twelve. More than five hundred at one time. James. All the apostles. Paul himself. And then he adds a remarkable phrase: "most of whom remain until now." In effect, Paul is telling the Corinthians that if they doubt him, they can go and ask. Hundreds of the witnesses were still alive.

Chapter Four traced how early this creed is. Paul says he "received" it, which means it was handed to him, and most scholars date it to within a few years of the crucifixion. The point here is what the creed says, and what it invites. Paul did not ask the Corinthians to believe a story with no one to vouch for it. He gave them names and told them the witnesses could still be found.

The Facts Most Historians Accept

It is one thing for believers to accept the resurrection. It is another to ask what historians, including skeptical ones, are willing to grant from the evidence. A number of facts are accepted by most scholars who study this period, whatever their personal beliefs.

Jesus died by crucifixion.

This is among the most widely accepted facts of ancient history. The Gospels record it, Paul assumes it, and non-Christian writers of the period mention it. The Roman soldiers who carried it out were professionals. When Pilate wondered whether Jesus had died so quickly, "summoning the centurion, he questioned him as to whether He was already dead. And ascertaining this from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph" (Mark 15:44-45). John records that the soldiers did not break His legs because "they saw that He was already dead," and that "one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out" (John 19:33-34).

He was buried, and the tomb was found empty.

Jesus was laid in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a known member of the council, and the women "were looking on to see where He was laid" (Mark 15:47). On the third day the tomb was found empty. Most scholars accept the empty tomb, though not all, and it should be stated that honestly.

Two details support it strongly. First, the earliest response from the authorities assumed it. They paid the guards to say, "His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep" (Matthew 28:13). No one explains the disappearance of a body that is still in its tomb. Second, the first witnesses to the empty tomb were women. In that culture, the testimony of women carried little weight in a court. Anyone inventing the story to persuade others would not have chosen women as the first witnesses. The Gospels record it because it is what happened.

The disciples sincerely believed they saw Him alive.

The disciples were not expecting a resurrection. When the women reported the empty tomb, "these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them" (Luke 24:11). Thomas refused to believe without seeing and touching the wounds (John 20:25). Yet within weeks these same men were proclaiming the resurrection publicly in Jerusalem, the city where Jesus had been executed. Peter, who had denied Jesus three times to a servant girl, now told the council that had condemned Jesus, "we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20). They were imprisoned, beaten, and threatened. James the son of Zebedee was executed by Herod (Acts 12:2), and early church tradition records that most of the apostles died for their testimony.

James, the brother of Jesus, was converted.

During Jesus' ministry, "not even His brothers were believing in Him" (John 7:5). Yet James appears in the creed: "then He appeared to James" (1 Corinthians 15:7). He became a leader of the church in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:19; Acts 15:13), and the Jewish historian Josephus records his execution decades later. Consider what it would take to convince a man that his own brother, whom he grew up with, was the Lord. Nothing less than seeing Him alive after His death explains it.

Paul, the persecutor, was converted.

Paul did not come to the faith as a sympathizer. "I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it" (Galatians 1:13). "I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God" (1 Corinthians 15:9). Something turned the most determined enemy of the church into its most tireless missionary. Paul said what it was: "last of all ... He appeared to me also."

The Alternative Explanations

Those who reject the resurrection must still explain these facts. Over the centuries, several explanations have been offered. Each deserves a fair hearing.

The disciples stole the body.

This was the first explanation, circulated by the authorities themselves (Matthew 28:15). But it requires us to believe that the disciples stole the body, hid it, and then spent the rest of their lives proclaiming a resurrection they knew they had faked, enduring prison, beatings, and death for it. Men will die for a lie they believe is true. Men do not die for a lie they know they invented. And the theory does nothing to explain the conversion of James or of Paul.

Jesus did not really die.

This is sometimes called the swoon theory. It proposes that Jesus only fainted on the cross and revived in the cool of the tomb. But it requires us to believe that professional Roman executioners failed at the one thing they did every day, that a spear wound to the side was not fatal, and that a man who had been scourged, crucified, and wrapped in burial cloths freed himself, moved the stone, slipped past the guard, and appeared to His disciples looking like the conqueror of death. A half-dead man in need of a physician does not inspire anyone to worship him as the risen Lord.

They went to the wrong tomb.

This theory proposes that the women, in their grief, went to the wrong grave and found it empty. But the women had watched where He was laid. The tomb belonged to a known member of the council. If the disciples were proclaiming a resurrection from the wrong tomb, the authorities had only to walk to the right one and produce the body. They never did.

The disciples hallucinated.

This theory proposes that the disciples, overcome with grief, experienced visions of Jesus that they mistook for reality. But hallucinations are experienced by individuals, in their own minds. They are not shared by eleven men at once, let alone by more than five hundred. Hallucinations do not leave a tomb empty. And a grieving follower might imagine seeing his master, but a skeptical brother and a hostile persecutor had no such grief and no such expectation.

Therefore each theory explains one fact and fails on the others. The theft theory cannot explain the disciples' willingness to die. The swoon theory cannot explain their worship. The wrong-tomb theory cannot explain why no body was produced. The hallucination theory cannot explain the empty tomb, the group appearances, or the conversions of James and Paul. Only one explanation accounts for all of the facts together: He rose.

Paul Stakes Everything on It

Paul did not treat the resurrection as a spiritual idea that could be true for some and not for others. He understood it as a claim of fact, and he set out plainly what would follow if it were false.

"And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:14-15).

"And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17).

"If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied" (1 Corinthians 15:19).

Consider how unusual that is. Most religious claims cannot be tested. They concern private experiences, unseen realms, or teachings that stand or fall on their own appeal. Christianity rests on a public event in history, and its greatest missionary told the world that if the event did not happen, the faith is worthless. That is what it means to say the resurrection is falsifiable. It could, in principle, be shown false. Paul told King Agrippa, "this has not been done in a corner" (Acts 26:26).

This is the difference between a preference and a claim of fact. A preference can be true for you and not for me. A claim of fact is true or false for everyone. The resurrection is a claim of fact, and it is the weightiest claim of fact ever made, because everything depends on it.

"But Now Christ Has Been Raised"

After setting out what would follow if the resurrection were false, Paul turns: "But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20).

The first fruits were the first portion of the harvest, offered to God as the pledge that the rest of the harvest was coming. Therefore the resurrection of Jesus is not only a past event. It is a promise. "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22). Because He rose, those who belong to Him will rise.

It also means that everything He claimed stands. The forgiveness He spoke over the paralyzed man was not the empty word of a dead teacher. It was the word of a living Lord, and it is still His word to everyone who comes to Him.

When the Skeptic Says "Dead Men Don't Rise"

The most common objection is not to any one piece of evidence. It is to the whole idea. "Dead men don't rise. Science has shown that."

Agree with the first part. Dead men do not rise by natural causes. No Christian claims they do. The disciples knew that as well as anyone, which is exactly why they did not believe the women at first. The claim is not that Jesus came back to life on His own. The claim is that God raised Him.

Therefore the real question is not whether dead men rise naturally. It is whether God exists. Chapter One set out the evidence that He does. If there is a God who brought the universe into existence, then raising a man from the dead is not beyond Him. Paul asked the same question of King Agrippa: "Why is it considered incredible among you people if God does raise the dead?" (Acts 26:8).

When you speak with someone who doubts the resurrection, do not begin by insisting on the conclusion. Lay out the facts, and then ask, "Which explanation accounts for all of them?" Let the person try the alternatives honestly.

And be prepared for the conversation to turn to something deeper. When Paul preached the resurrection in Athens, "some began to sneer, but others said, 'We shall hear you again concerning this'" (Acts 17:32). The evidence was the same for both groups. The difference was in the heart. Evidence answers the head, but only surrender answers the heart. A dead teacher can be admired and ignored. A risen Lord has a claim on every part of a person's life. For many, that is the real objection, and you should pray for them as much as you reason with them.

Go and Ask Them

Return to Paul's phrase, "most of whom remain until now." Paul was not afraid of investigation. He invited it. He gave the Corinthians names, numbers, and the knowledge that the witnesses could still be found. A man inventing a story does not hand his readers a list of people who can contradict him.

We cannot walk the roads of Judea and question the five hundred. But we have their testimony, preserved in documents written while they lived, and we have the facts that even skeptical historians grant. The invitation still stands. Examine it. Test the alternatives. Ask which explanation accounts for everything.

And then answer the question that follows. If this really happened, then Jesus is who He said He is. His forgiveness is real. His claim on your life is real. Death is not the end. If this really happened, what changes for you on Monday?

The Charge

Jesus named His resurrection as the sign. Paul staked the whole faith on it and invited anyone to check it. The tomb was empty, the witnesses were changed, and a skeptic and a persecutor became His servants. Every alternative explanation fails on at least one of the facts.

The evidence is in. The verdict is yours.

The Juror's Assignment: Memorize the oldest creed of the church, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." Then write your answer to one question: "If this really happened, what changes for me on Monday?"

Next: Chapter Seven, Why Does God Allow Evil and Suffering?